Faith, Family, and Farm

When The Herdsman and I decided that we could not live without one another, He said, ” So, do you want to get married?”  Needless to say, romance is not a part of The Herdsman’s personality! I obviously said yes and its been an adventure from day one. The Herdsman and I felt it was important to discus our beliefs early on in our relationship. It is our faith in the Almighty God that has made us strong as a couple when faced with individual trials, as well as situations that test our marriage. One of the biggest subject we discussed was how to rear our children.  We agreed that immersing our children in the word of God, as well as living our lives as God would have us live it was most important.  That being said, we are not perfect and don’t expect our girls to be. We just want to strive everyday to make the best effort of living as God would want us too.

Our family unit is built on personal responsibility. Everyone has to carry their weight so that we can balance. We try to do this by assigning chores. The Herdsman is responsable for the outside of the house and maintenance of the house. I take care of cleaning, cooking, and care for all living things in the house. Em has to keep her room clean and the play room picked up. While the youngest mostly tag’s along behind me; she does help carry laundry, gets utensils out of the dishwasher, and helps her sister clean up the play room. We like to do a lot together as a family. Cooking is one activity that we enjoy the most. The Herdsman likes to cook and we will cook together sometimes. Every meal we say our blessing before we eat and thank God for being able to be together. We also like to guess the “secret ingredient” in the main dish. It’s a game that we made up mainly to encourage Em to eat different ingredients, but it also lets us just talk to one another.

The farm is our way of life. Our faith teaches us that God made animals and then he made man. We feel that the lessons learned by living on a farm will prepare our girls for life. The miracle of a new life and seeing that moment as it happens is a beautiful thing. They also see the finality of death and that death knows no age. The girls are learning that a calf who has to be bottle fed will be looking for them to come and feed it. Grass has to be planted for the winter so the cow’s will have grass to eat. The cow’s have to be feed regardless of if it’s 85 degrees or 29 degrees.  Our way of life is not understood by the mass majority of people today.  People don’t understand that we can’t just up and go on vacation or that the cow’s don’t just stop having calves so you can go on holiday. People laugh when I tell them that we planned our wedding and children’s births around calving and hay season. Reality is that if I wanted to go on a honeymoon it wasn’t going to be when he had calves coming or hay in the field. If I wanted him to be able to be with me during the birth of our girls, we had to plan it.

The average person with an 8-5 job can not imagine having to live their work.  The farmer is up before the sun and many times home after it goes down.  We see that our life contributes to feeding the world and feel that it is our duty to do so.  Even when farmers and ranchers are made out to only be harvesting government subsidies and poisoning the world. There will always be people who take advantage of government handouts, but they are a small percentage of the mass majority of those who truly need help.  We can only have faith in our Lord to bring our family and farm to the table!

Introductions

My name is Cassie and I am the herdsman’s wife. With his encouragement I have decided to let you into our way of life. There are many blog’s on the world wide web that give accounts of daily living on a cattle farm, but the more the merrier if you ask me. Through this blog you will find an account of everyday life on a purebred cattle farm in the southeast. Our story is one of love, family, and our faith in Christ Jesus.  I will also share recipes and house hold cleaning tips that I find.

The herdsman and I met thirteen years ago while attending one of our states agriculture colleges. I was a freshman with all intentions of becoming a veterinarian and he was a second year sophomore looking to take on the cattle industry. It was love at first sight for me. When I went to the local watering hole where all the college kids gathered on Thursday nights, I had no idea that across the dance floor seated at a table with his roommates I would say to my girlfriend, “I’m going to marry that guy”.

I was not out to find a husband at college. I was never the girl that had to have a boyfriend or even wanted to date. But that night as I looked across the dance floor, I was forever fixed on the Herdsman! He was not like most guys that I had met. He was guarded with his emotions and gave off an unavailable vibe. But when he finally asked me to dance I jumped! When he took my hand on the dance floor, my heart felt what my eyes had known. Thirteen years and two daughters later, I still look at him and feel my heart’s confirmation.

Over the years many ladies have said to me, ” what I wouldn’t give to live your life.” That is a strong statement from the outside looking in.  So what is it about the life of a farmer/cattleman that leaves people longing for this lifestyle? I can not say I know what it would be, as I grew up on a row crop farm in southwest Georgia. When I ask people why they would want to live my life, they give answers most likely out of romance novels they have read. I hate to break it to you all, but living on a farm is not the love story you read about in a harlequin novel!

The Herdsman’s first job out of college was working for a purebred Angus farm in Middle Georgia. It was a great job working for great people and close to the Herdsman’s parents. After working there for two and a half years the Herdsman and I were married. We set up house in a small two bedroom one bath house that he had been living in on a part of the farm. After being married for a year we decided to try for our first child. Nine months later we were blessed with our first daughter, Emma Hazel. With her entrance into the world she brought a whole new reason for life. We were officially a family and with her she brought a heightened need for financial security. The Herdsman set out to find a better paying position. That brought about our move two and a half hours southwest to the town of Albany. Moving away from his family was hard, but the new farm was within thirty miles of my family. The second farm gave us a larger house this time, but it was not the opportunity that was presented to us. After almost four years of broken promises of pay raises and promotions the Albany farm relieved the Herdsman of his job due to downsizing. This was one month before the birth of our second daughter, Adah Carolina. Thankfully the farm allowed our family to stay in the house for sixty days. With the economy still on a downward slide, the Herdsman was unsure of employment in his field. Luckily I was employed and my grandparents had a rental property open for us to live in until we could get back on our feet.

The great thing about living on the farms he had worked for, was housing was provided. But when the job was gone, that left us with no home. We are grateful to my grandparents for giving us a place to live, otherwise we would have been living out of my vehicle. The Herdsman and I tried to make this sudden change easy for Emma Hazel. Her little world had been turned upside down. She had lost the only home she had known and as excited as she was to have a little sister, even that was more of a change than she had expected. I tried to ease the move by involving her in packing her room and when everything was out of the house we all went room by room saying goodbye to all the living we had done in four years. This was one of the hardest things I have ever done. All the memories of family and friends visiting, picnics in the front yard, Emma painting her masterpieces on the porch, decorating Christmas cookies and the fresh cut Christmas tree every year, loosing loyal companions, and never having a nursery decorated for Adah. When everyone had left the house, I sat in the floor and cried. I had it in my mind that we would raise our girls in that house. We had no secondary plan in place. This was probably one of the lowest points in our life or so we thought!

For six months we struggled to pay our bills and put food on the table. Every night I prayed for the right farm to come along. I had to tell myself to put our lives into God’s hands, that he had a plan for us. I worked full time and the Herdsman would travel two and a half hours to work for his brother’s remodeling company for a week at a time. The lack of good paying jobs for a cattle herdsman was depressing. The positions we found were all in the Midwest and they did not want to hire anyone from the south. They were afraid the distance from family and harsh winters would drive us southerners back to the nat line!

Finally a phone call from one of his college roommates telling him of an ad for a purebred Brangus farm in middle Georgia. He emailed his resume to the farm manager and within a few hours the farm manager called to talk to him about the job and his qualifications. The manager seemed to be pleased with the Herdsman, but he had to talk with the owners. After several agonizing days the manager called to have both of us come for an interview. They offered him the job and we have been here for just over a year now. I have since left my job to stay at home with our girls and help out on the farm when needed. Being at home has also given me the opportunity to start photographing horses again.